Bailey is a highly controversial psychologist whose research is focused on biology and sexual orientation. He has a number of interesting ideas. He believes that you can tell if a man is gay or not just by listening to his voice for 20 seconds.

While he does not deny the idea that homosexuality is genetic, he considers it an evolutionary mistake, and may represent a developmental error. He has also linked homosexuality to higher levels of psychopathology.

In one of his most controversial stands, he believes that when the technology becomes available to screen fetuses for potential homosexuality, that it is a morally neutral choice for parents to choose to abort them. He calls this beneficial because homosexuals would have a hard life and it would further the parent’s freedom to raise the type of child they want to raise. How this differs from screening for gender and aborting if it is not the sex you want is difficult to differentiate. To Bailey, homosexuality is not a choice, it’s a disease to be eradicated.

It is this connection to Eugenics that caught the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In an article on their site, they point out the connection to the neo-eugenics group, the Human Biodiversity Institute, which seems to share some of the same long discredited ideas about shaping humanity that left a negative mark on many of the early birth control pioneers. Their site features crude sexual and ethnic stereotyoing.

His one published book in 2003, The Man Who Would Be Queen, subtitled The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism, was mired in controversy. In the book he argues that male homosexuality is congenital and a result of heredity and prenatal environment. He also suggests that transsexualism is either an extreme type of homosexuality or an expression of a paraphilia- in other words, they are turned on by vaginas and just want to have one of their own. This is diametrically opposed to the gender identity disorder diagnosis that most of the medical and psychiatric community accepts. He claims that transgendered people are more likely to shoplift, and especially well-suited to prostitution. One of the major criticisms of the book is that it presents Bailey’s opinion as science. The gay and transgender community generally rejected the book’s findings.

So did the transgender people he interviewed for the book, who claim they did not know the discussions were for a book. Some claimed they talked to him because they thought they were getting help for a recommendation for sexual reassignment surgery.

Bailey also was the lead researcher for a questionable study that called into question the existence of a bisexual orientation. You can read more about that controversial study in the Questionable Research section.